FCA Head Sergio Marchionne Cancels Paris Motor Show Appearance

Sergio Marchionne has cancelled his appearance at the Paris Motor Show

The Paris Motor Show is considered one of the prime places for carmakers to debut their European-oriented lineups. Because of this, it’s often seen as the perfect spotlight for CEOs and other head people in the auto industry to make an appearance. That is, unless you’re Fiat Chrysler and Ferrari CEO Sergio Marchionne.

Marchionne has cancelled his appearance at the Paris Motor Show, where he was originally scheduled to meet with journalists on Thursday.

Fiat Chrysler said in a statement, “The media availability with Sergio Marchionne on Sept. 29 at the Paris Motor Show has been cancelled.” Later, a spokesperson for the company went on to say that the CEO would not be attending the Paris show at all.

The spokesperson for Fiat Chrysler didn’t give us a reason as to why Marchionne won’t be showing up at the popular auto show, but we have one big guess.

You see, this isn’t the first time Marchionne has cancelled an appearance at an automotive show. Just last year, the Fiat Chrysler head cancelled his appearance in Frankfurt after Fiat Chrysler was chosen as the target company in United States’ labor talks.

Similar to the situation surrounding the Frankfurt show, Fiat Chrysler was recently made the next target for Unifor, the union representing Canadian automotive workers. Now that Unifor has finished ratifying a new contract with General Motors, it will now set a strike deadline for the Italian-American carmaker based on when negotiating begins.

It’s likely Marchionne’s cancelled appearance means he will be preparing for these negotiations.

So, the Paris Motor Show is going to be short one slightly crazy automotive executive. With its innovative lineup of vehicles from every car brand, it’s likely the auto show will still stay interesting, though.